Health Equity Education: Health Related Social Needs

Learners should understand social determinants or health-related social needs, equity terms, local community history and demographics.

Resources:

• The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes social determinants of health in their Healthy People 2030 information 
• There are several resources for information about social determinants of health on line.
  • From the CDC
  • From the AMA
  • From the AHA
  • From APTR: Case Studies
  • From the AAMC
  • From the NIH
• Public Health Grand Rounds:  Maureen Benjamins, a Senior Fellow at Sinai Urban Health Institute, presents: “Unequal Cities: Structural Racism & the Death Gap in America’s 30 Largest Cities,”
  • Recording
• Common Ground Health has created reports on several key health-related social issues including poverty (Overloaded) and racism (The Color of Health), and how they impact our region. These reports can be found in the IMPACT section of the Common Ground Health Website 

Learners in the clinical space should understand and gain competence in screening for social determinants and connecting patients to the social resources they need.

Resources:

• The AMA created learning modules in the AMA Ed Hub; “Structural Determinants of Health Inequity: Racism, Power, & Structural Competency” is a learning module that describes several ways to incorporate structural competency into medical care.
• The Office of Minority Health, of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, created a “Guide to Providing Effective Communication & Language Assistance Services.”
  • This tool helps organizations provide effective communication and language assistance services to the culturally and linguistic diverse individuals receiving care.
• Public Health Grand Rounds: Heather Busick, MS, MD, Physician; Associate Chief Medical Information Officer, URMC, The HEART of the Matter: Leveraging Our Electronic Health Record to Address Health Inequities

Learners should use data to create system-based solutions for addressing health-related social needs of patients.

Resources:

• Public Health Grand Rounds: Alisha Moreland-Capuia, MD, MACPsych, founder and director, Institute for Trauma Informed Systems Change (ITISC), McLean/Harvard Medical School. Building Trauma Informed Organizations and People: Why Healing Must Be the Way Forward
• Public Health Grand Rounds: A panel of leaders from the URMC HEPSO office with FOODLINK, a local food hub described their partnership to provide emergency food pantry access to patients and students  A Tale of Two Pantries: Partnering with the Community to Address Local Food Insecurity
• Public Health Grand Rounds: A panel led by Kelly Luther, LMSW, senior director of Social Work and Patient & Family Services at URMC and community partners Lisa Lewis, MPA, Chief Program & Operations Officer at Catholic Charities Family and Community Services and Kathy Curtis-Rubin, RN, senior program director of Clinical Services at DePaul Community Services talk about services to address housing insecurity among patients: Transitional Supportive Housing and Community Partnerships 

• The Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a key strategy that supports organizations and governments to identify and integrate health-promoting policies and practices, so that health becomes a key component in all community decision-making. The Health Impact Project, formerly a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation & The Per Charitable Trusts, created a toolkit of HIAs, and related resources to promote cross-sector collaboration and decision-making to improve population health.
  • HIA Toolkit